4 JUN 2024– The world is warming at a record pace, with unseasonable heat baking nearly every continent on Earth. April, the last month for which statistics are available, marked the 11th consecutive month the planet has set a new temperature high.
Photo: PSI/Science Photo Library via AFP
Experts say that is a clear sign the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing. But many believe – or at least say they believe – that climate change is not real, relying on a series of well-trodden myths to make their point.
MADRID, Nov 26 2024 (IPS)* –In most Western European countries you can purchase –or rent- a 60 square-metres flat that is equipped with two toilets, one for her and one for him. Larger apartments may feature even more.
Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS
For those who can afford it, such facilities are taken for granted. Yet, nearly half the global population—over 3.5 billion people—live without access to safely managed sanitation, including 419 million forced to practice open defecation.
(UN News)* —Talks began in Busan, South Korea, on Monday [] aiming to clinch a legally binding deal on plastics pollution, led by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
UNEP/Cyril Villemain | A 30-foot high monument entitled Turn off the plastics tap by Canadian activist and artist Benjamin von Wong was exhibited at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2022.
The meeting follows two years of intergovernmental negotiations to develop a legally binding global instrument that covers land and the marine environment – a blink of an eye in diplomatic circles, where multilateral deals can be decades in the making.
Suliman Azab with one of his children outside their collapsed home in Khan Younis, Gaza. The family were displaced three times by the conflict. Photo: WFP/Ali Jadallah
(UN News)* — Families fleeing from besieged areas of northern Gaza are leaving homes and shelters with just the shirts on their backs, Louise Wateridge, Senior Emergency Coordinator for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told UN News on Saturday [].
Speaking from an UNRWA school in Gaza City, which is in the north of the Strip, Ms. Wateridge said that, for almost 50 days, UN humanitarian missions have attempted to deliver supplies to northern Gaza, including besieged areas such as Jabalia, but access to those in desperate need has been extremely limited.
(UN News)* — The number of children being recruited into armed groups across Haiti has increased by 70 per cent over the past year, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported. The unprecedented spike also reveals the alarming deterioration of child protection amid escalating violence in the Caribbean nation.
According to the latest estimates, children now comprise up to half of all armed group members, with recruitment driven by widespread poverty, lack of education and collapse of essential services.
(UN News)* —Rich nations pledged to contribute at least $300 billion annually to the global fight against climate change as UN climate talks came to a contentious end early Sunday [24 November 2024] morning in Baku.
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UNFCCC/Kiara Worth | Wide shot of the plenary hall at the UN climate conference, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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Developing nations who had sought over $1 trillion in assistance called the agreement “insulting” and argued it did not give them the vital resources they required to truly address the complexities of the climate crisis.
BAKU, Nov 24 2024 (IPS)* –They say it is taboo to talk about money. But this is exactly what developing countries came for: to haggle and push for the climate finance deal of a lifetime, as the climate crisis is, for them, a matter of life and death.
A delegate reacts during the final negotiations that led to a much-criticized climate finance deal. Credit: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth
Wealthy nations also came for their own deal of a lifetime—to hoist the climate finance burden on the private sector as they take the bare minimum financial responsibility.
A finance COP was always going to be difficult as, although they can pay, they simply will not pay.
MADRID, 23 November 2024 – Human atrocities seem to have become so ‘normalised’ that more and more major crimes continue to be either nearly ignored, or shortly reported every now and then… or even only once a year.
16 Days of Activism: #NoExcuse. UNiTE to End Violence against Women
(UN News)* — The death toll of humanitarian workers in 2024 has become the “deadliest on record”, with 281 killed globally, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, reported on Friday [].
The grim milestone has surpassed previous records.
“Humanitarian workers are being killed at an unprecedented rate, their courage and humanity being met with bullets and bombs,”said Tom Fletcher, the new UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
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“This violence is unconscionable and devastating to aid operations,” he added.
Photo: PSI/Science Photo Library via AFP
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 